Facebook Can Predict When Your Relationship Will Become Facebook-Official

Facebook is watching your relationship, so much so that it can predict when a couple is about to officially declare itself on the social network. And, after all, if a relationship isn't Facebook-official, is it even a relationship?

According to new data released on Valentine's Day, a couple's interaction on Facebook increases considerably in the three months before the relationship status is officially declared online. "Relationships start with a period of courtship: on Facebook, messages are exchanged, profiles are visited, posts are shared on each other's timelines," Carlos Diuk of Facebook's Data Science team wrote in a post. After the official declaration, though, interaction begins to drop.

"When the relationship starts ("day 0"), posts begin to decrease...Presumably, couples decide to spend more time together, courtship is off, and online interactions give way to more interactions in the physical world," wrote Diuk.

The study also analyzed the kinds of words used and found that happiest emotions peak in the run-up to an official announcement and level off thereafter. True.